Niall McKinney

PresidentAvado North America

After graduating from Oxford University, Niall started his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble. In 2000, he left to help create one of the first community websites for teenagers to chat, share photos and message each other called Wowgo. It turned out the year 2000 was too early for social media!

Instead he joined IPC Media, a division of Time Inc., where he became Marketing Director at the age of 24, and launched Europe’s top selling men’s magazine.

After Time Inc., he was appointed CMO of Travelocity Europe, with a seat on the European board. While overseeing a marketing team of 140, he recognized the learning curve involved in integrating digital within traditional marketing channels. He formed TKE to help organisations to bridge the digital capability gap.

With offices in London, New York, Singapore and Sao Paulo, and a faculty of over 100 marketing experts globally, TKE helped leading marketing-driven organizations to integrate digital into their business. TKE was the official digital training partner for WPP globally and delivered training for the world’s top advertising agencies around the world.

TKE also provided training for clients like Time Inc., News Corp, MTV, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Mars and Disney. The company trained over 10,000 people every year in digital skills across marketing, advertising sales, strategy, and content creation. In 2012, TKE launched 12ahead.com, a platform for cutting edge digital trends and case studies.

In 2016, Niall sold The Knowledge Engineers to AVADO Learning, and became the company’s Managing Director of the international division, based across the London, Singapore, and New York offices. At present, Niall sits as the President of AVADO, North America.